Consumer Report: Breeding Green Sheep

British scientists want to get ahead of the herd in the race to save the planet.

They’re sending sheep into high-tech methane machines to measure their emissions in the latest effort to cut greenhouse gases on farms.

Farmer Rob Hodgkins hopes to lead his flock to a greener pasture by rounding up sheep that produce less methane. “You're lookin’ for the needle in a haystack, that single little black sheep amongst all the white ones,” says Hodgkins.

British scientists are helping with the hunt in a pioneering project in Hertfordshire, England.

“What we’re looking for is for animals that tend to be low methane emitters,” says Professor Joanne Conington, a livestock scientist at Scotland's Rural College.

Professor Joanne Conington and her team hauled in a special methane machine to find out just how gassy each sheep is.

“The animals go into a specific location for about 50 minutes and there's a gas analyzer on the top which monitors the amount of the methane,” says Conington.

Scientists estimate there are about 1.2 billion sheep around the world, and that they're releasing nearly 8 million tons of methane into the atmosphere every year.

The carbon-cutting concept came from New Zealand, where researchers selected and bred the world’s first low methane-emitting sheep, slashing harmful emissions by 16 percent.

“There's something about these animals that are better, more efficient at perhaps digesting their food and growing faster,” Conington says.

For Hodgkins, it’s a long-term investment that he sees as a good-natured gamble.

“I'm sort of effectively taking a taking a bet that in 10 years, some of the big retailers, supermarkets will be more interested in low methane meat if you like, meat that has a lower carbon footprint,” he says.

Betting on the farm is betting on the future of green sheep.

Farmers hope the methane measuring project will reduce emissions by 25 percent within the next ten to fifteen years.